


not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins

by Mythopoeia



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [189]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: :(, And one hand in particular, Childhood, F/M, Family Fluff, Flashbacks, Gen, Ho, Mithrim, Title from Jane Hirshfield, alqualonde fallout, as in it is a fic about hands, everything would have been better if mahtan was the fave grandpa, instead of finwe, ohoho, tags will change, this is a fic about separation anxiety
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23017333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythopoeia/pseuds/Mythopoeia
Summary: Maedhros, and his hands, and everything before.
Relationships: Fëanor | Curufinwë/Nerdanel, Maedhros | Maitimo & Nerdanel
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [189]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 17
Kudos: 26





	1. Nerdanel

“How long until you begin teaching him to hold a wee fairy chisel of his own, Nerdanel?”

“I don’t think I shall, at all,” Nerdanel replied, comfortable from where she leaned over the back of her father’s chair, cooing. Her baby son did not coo back, but his eyes were open, wide and grey and watching her. She wrinkled her nose, and his tiny brow lifted as though in consternation, to her delight.

She went on: “I do not think I shall have the time, for I know Feanor is already planning to make him the greatest smith of his or indeed any generation. It is only sensible, for the eldest son to follow his father’s trade. Perhaps I shall apprentice our daughter, when we have one. Did you know Feanor was convinced little Mae was a daughter, all through my confinement? He was determined to name her Miriel, after his mother.”

“A great comfort, that, in knowing your husband to be proven wrong about anything! Well done, my girl.” Mahtan’s tone was only half jesting; he was still not particularly endeared to his precocious son in law. At the sound of his loud brogue, the baby in his arms wobbled its attention from its mother to its grandfather, and Mahtan beamed even as Nerdanel swatted at the back of his head. 

“Papa, don’t be mean.”

“No harm if he is not here, Nerdanel,” the old Scotsman rumbled unpenitently, and nodded towards the baby’s thin, newborn fingers where they peeped out from the blanket. “And look you here; he has your hands, not Feanor’s. Why not make an artist of him, and leave the daughter for your husband?”

“My hands? Do you think so?” Nerdanel asked doubtfully, tilting her cheek against her father’s wild red head as she regarded her own fingers. She had always been critical of her hands; had even been embarrassed, when she had first realized Feanor’s wedding band was smaller around than her own. Feanor had only laughed at her pouting, but she still could not help being jealous of his slim wrists, his beautiful, articulate fingers. Maedhros had not yet begun to put on baby fat, his face and limbs still elfin-delicate, but she had been secretly proud to think this meant he took more after his father than her, no matter the color of his hair. Nerdanel had all her life loved to make beautiful things, despite not possessing much beauty in herself; privately she thought her first baby the most beautiful of all her creations. Surely his fragile hands, with their petal-tiny nails and clinging, curious grip—surely those thin-curling fingers which she already loved to kiss were more like her husband’s, than her own. 

Mahtan clucked as he held out one of his own thick fingers, waggling it temptingly, and they both laughed as little Maedhros instantly reached for it, his tiny hand too small to curl around the knuckle completely but unerring in its aim. 

“Aye, now, he has your canny hands for certain; look at that grip! It is strong as yours was, daughter, and as quick. Keep a wary eye on this one; if he’s half as clever with those wee fingers as you were, when you were a babe, he shall have you running to keep him out of mischief once he’s big enough to crawl.”

“Oh,” Nerdanel fretted, albeit through her smiles: “Stop that! I don’t like to think of him crawling yet, Papa, nor getting into mischief.”

“Ah, well.” Mahtan turned his head to kiss her fondly. “True enough, my dear, true enough. There will be time enough for his growing without talking about it—and for mischief also, no doubt! I shall enjoy seeing him running his father as grey as you ran me, eh?”

“If he does take after me as you say, then he shall be no trouble at all,” Nerdanel countered, tugging a little at her father’s red hair. “For I see no grey here, you liar.”

“Hmph. Teach him to work with his hands when he is old enough, do you hear? I want my grandson to sculpt me a bust, that I might display it on my mantle in a pair with the one you made.”

“I still think an etching in silver shall be more likely, or a little copper statue,” Nerdanel said, the reaching down to stroke her son’s satin-soft hair. There was a soft place at the top of his head, beneath his hair, where she could feel his pulse humming warm against her fingertips. It was Feanor who loved to press careful kisses there. 

“Still,” she added, as her child at last began to make fretful noises and she reached out with both hands to lift him up into her arms: “I suppose one or two lessons would not go amiss. If he decides that is what he wants.”


	2. Interlude: Alqualonde

“Only wake me when it is an hour to dawn,” he said quietly, not quite meeting her eyes, “and I shall require nothing more of you.”

He hesitated, as though caught by a sudden memory, and his pale face suffused a little with—not shame, exactly, nor guilt. But still there was a burning there, high on the delicate sweep of his cheekbones, beneath his bruised and nervous eyes. 

_Nervous._

She had not thought him so, in the room below. 

“I am sorry,” he said, in a low voice. “It is unkind of me to ask you to sit all night awake. And that after you were kind enough to answer all my questions. But I must . . . I must leave before dawn.”

She shrugged, and pulled her gaudy shawl higher up around her shoulders. 

“I am awake most nights,” she told him, as she settled into the single rickety chair by the corner desk. She did not really care enough to be delicate about what she meant. She knew he understood what she was saying, but his flush did not deepen. It was not prudery, then, that troubled him. 

Interesting. 

He dragged off his long coat and his boots, which he discarded on the floor, but otherwise remained clothed. When he stretched out on the poor mattress, it was like every movement hurt him. He lay a moment flat on his back, rigid, staring up into the dark ceiling like he was seeing something else there. 

One of his hands worked, slender fingers grasping at nothing and going still. Remembering the shape of something she could only guess at, or maybe only fidgeting, senseless. 

Nervous. 

“I could hold your hand?” She suggested. He looked toward her, startled, and she shrugged. “If you like.”

“Please don’t,” he replied faintly, and he turned on his side, away from her, like he could not bear to see her or be seen. 

She watched the shape of him for a while, as he lay motionless; then she watched the folk walking about on the street outside the window; then she watched the sky, when the streets were finally empty. It was difficult to stay awake, left alone like this with no one but herself for company. She took out the purse he handed her and she counted the coins again and again, but they seemed real every time. A full night’s pay, for only a little conversation and a bed unwarmed! He never even touched her, once they were alone.

Once, when it was very late and even counting could not keep her from nodding in her chair, she pushed up from the seat as quietly as she could and tiptoed to peer at the man in the bed. Her eyes were owl-wide and sharp in the dark, and she was astonished to find that he really was asleep. His right hand lay half-curled on the pillow beside his face, partially obscuring his features, and his left was pulled close to his chest. His loose-fallen hair stirred, a little, with his breathing. He lay a little curled, himself, despite being so tall. It was like he was used to having someone there to sleep with; she could see the loneliness in his bones. 

( _Wait_ , he had whispered, stepping back when she moved to kiss him in the dark. Lifting one hand to stay her, a gentle movement more felt than seen, in the black air.)

( _Wait,_ he had said, speaking low. _I did not pay you for—that._ )

When the stars began to grey out in the silent sky, she crept close again and dared to touch him lightly on the hand. 

“Hey, mister,” she whispered. “Dawn’s coming.”

He woke at once, and sat up awkwardly, favoring one shoulder. Again, he did not quite meet her eyes—but then he did, as she turned back towards him from the desk, the newly lit lantern warming in her hand. The light in his grey eyes was the lamplight, but also something else. His lashes were salt-clagged and his gaze was tired, despite his sleep. 

When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

She had not noticed him weeping.

“Thank you. I—I forgot to ask your name.”

“It don’t matter,” she said quietly, holding the lantern close. “I never asked yours, either.”

His mouth moved, then drew tight shut. He pulled on his boots and his coat, and he shoved his right hand in his pocket, fingers moving like he was grasping for something. She was afraid, for a second, that he would pull out a gun, but he didn’t. He just stood there, chin down, face drawn. Waiting. 

She opened the door for him, and he stepped out into the darkened hall, back to the narrow stairs. 

He did not say goodbye, and she did not watch him go. 

*

( _Six weeks,_ she tells the men who come asking, both of them young, both of them beautiful. One is dark-haired, the other fair. There is a light in their eyes that is not from the lamps. 

(She looks back down at the wanted notice they pushed at her, at the description there. Tall, red-haired, young. A bullet-scar in one shoulder and possibly recent burns. Substantial reward offered for any information leading to an arrest on charges of theft, of arson, of murder—seven counts of—

_(His long fingers tightening in the dark, around the shape of a phantom gun.)_

(The dark-haired boy with the trembling mouth jolts forward across the table when she tells him: 

_(You missed him by six weeks.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chronology tag to shortly after “Safeguard.”


	3. Rumil (1)

However complicated Rumil’s opinions of Feanor might be, that confusion paled against the myriad impressions he had of his friend’s seemingly innumerable sons. There was not much time, of course, to allot to socializing in Mithrim; nor did the boys for the most part seem interested in talking. If Rumil had to describe the whole of them in a word, it would be _clannish_ ; if in two, then he would add _lonely_ to the epithet. Despite rarely leaving each other’s sides, they scarcely seemed to enjoy each other’s company. Maglor, in particular, hounded his eldest brother’s every step and sat beside him at every meal, but he never laughed and he never sang, for all Feanor had praised his voice in decades of letters. Celegorm—or was it Caranthir—had always been wild, Feanor had assured, but Rumil privately believed what had been wildness in New York had somewhere on the road turned feral. He was reckless, hot-tempered, and had already nearly picked enough fights that Rumil was glad he had given up human company for the most part in favor of hiding alone with his dog. Caranthir—or was it Celegorm—was the plainest of Feanor’s sons and the most taciturn, and thus a mystery. There was so little of Feanor about him, Rumil wondered if in his mannerisms he was seeing all that was left of the absent Nerdanel, of whom Feanor would no longer speak. 

Deciphering the twins, of course, was the most difficult, and Rumil had said as much in the stable yard one morning, after he had been startled nearly out of his skin by one of them scampering out unannounced from what he had assumed to be an empty stall. It made it worse, that he could not tell them apart. 

“That is all right,” Maedhros had grinned, as he finished tying back his riot of copper hair and set to rolling up his shirtsleeves. “We call them Ambarussa, to hide the fact that we cannot tell them apart, either.”

Rumil had not asked Maedhros to aid him in horse shoeing that rare lazy morning, as it was a task he was well used to doing on his own, but the young man had heard the commotion in the stable and upon investigating had eagerly offered his assistance. That was who Maedhros was, it seemed: a man ever willing to do what was asked, even before it was asked of him. He led raiding parties and washed dishes and mucked stables with the same readiness and the same singleminded focus. He never seemed to rest. He had proved himself a damn good farrier, too, before Maglor appeared in the doorway, aggrieved, to demand his brother’s help in locating a mislaid riding boot.

Maglor was not popular, among Rumil’s men. They gave him and Celegorm little love, and the younger boys little respect. But Maedhros—

You could not help but be charmed by Maedhros.

Feanor’s eldest son’s charm was effortless, because it was genuine; the men all loved him, because he was easy to love. Even the most cagey and suspicious of Mithrim’s guards had by now grown fond of Maedhros Feanorian, who would share lonely watches and poor victuals and stale drink without complaint, and with an easy good humor that made any such trials feel lighter. Rumil had noticed the effect he had on everyone in his company almost as soon as he arrived in Mithrim; he had even felt it in himself, that afternoon in the stables. He found himself watching Maedhros on an evening not long after the shoeing (for to celebrate a successful raid that morning Rumil had approved opening a new cask of wine and another of ale, and Maedhros unlike his brothers had chosen to sit with Jem’s company by their merry courtyard fire) and wondered, a little darkly, if Feanor understood what a powerful weapon he had to hand, in his beautiful bright-haired boy. 

“My people are very fond of you,” Rumil observed to Maedhros, when the young man wandered over to where he sat upon a wooden chair drawn up in the shadow of the wall. Maedhros looked a little surprised, and then a little wary at being addressed; he had clearly come seeking not Rumil but his father who sat beside him. Yet in even these few weeks it was plain to Rumil how compliments pleased Feanor’s son, flattery sparking a little in his eyes the way it did in Feanor’s. It was one of the only ways he found them at all alike. 

Maedhros bowed gracefully, hiding those telltale eyes, and avoiding spilling any of the drink from his brimming cup with easy practice.

“Thank you, sir,” The young man replied, as he straightened. “They have been very kind in accepting me, I must admit.”

Rumil snorted. “There’s nothing kind about it, I assure you. I am certain they tried very doughtily to hate you from the day you arrived; that they are so glad of your company now is entirely due to your efforts, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Oh, Maedhros is well-used to managing small-minded men,” Feanor interjected, with a dismissive wave of his hand. He smiled, thin and sharp. “He has plenty of practice from his boyhood days, considering how well he ruled his cousins. By the time we left New York he practically had Fingolfin’s eldest eating from his hand. Isn’t that right, Maedhros?”

“I suppose it must be,” Maedhros said. He was still smiling. Wine looked well, on Feanor’s son, and his color was better than Rumil had yet seen. The fight that morning had done him good. 

Rumil tapped one finger against his chin, searching his memories of Feanor’s letters as he glanced back to his friend. 

“Fingolfin’s eldest? Who is that, now—Finrod?”

“Fingon.” 

“Ah, of course. Tell me, is he much like Fingolfin, this friend of yours? Feanor has told me plenty enough about that one, in the first days of our friendship and then in all the years since!”

“Oh,” Maedhros said, carelessly, “I daresay.” 

Then he glanced a quick, queer look at his father, and raised his cup to his lips. 

“That is to say,” Maedhros continued, once he had taken a long draught: “In my observation they were alike in that they possessed no subtlety of thought; they spoke plainly, were not given to fancifulness, and in their simplicity they both of them trusted overmuch. And in any case, my cousin would not eat from my hand anymore, I shouldn’t wonder. No; never again. The utility of that friendship is quite used up now, I fear.”

“A pity, that. Still: Necessary evils.” Feanor said it like a joke, as he lifted his mug, tin warmed to copper-red in the firelight. Maedhros laughed, a peculiar, dizzy sound, and tilted his head to examine the tin cup in his own hands. He was rolling it between his palms, back and forth, as though it was a child’s spinning top.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I find my cup has run empty. If you would excuse me, Rumil—Athair—“

“Yes, yes,” Feanor laughed, standing up to forestall his son’s next bow with a hand clapped to his shoulder. Even standing, Feanor was not as tall as Maedhros, and he had to reach up a little, to touch the shoulder; to rest his hand, with something close to tenderness, against the side of Maedhros’s neck. 

The boy stilled like a fawn, the mirth still brimming like water in his wide eyes. 

“Go, then,” Feanor smiled. “Enjoy yourself, Maedhros. Time enough for work again on the morrow.”

“Your father is right, for once,” Rumil put in cheerfully, leaning back in his chair. “Leave us old men in peace and go make merry with your friends. Lord knows you’ve earned it, these past weeks.”

*

Maedhros made very merry, that evening. He danced until he could not stand without trembling, and laughed until he cried. 

It was good, Rumil thought, to see him at last feeling a little at home.


	4. Rumil (2)

“I am sorry to disturb you,” Rumil apologized, a little sheepish. “I am not yet accustomed to guests, I fear. Your father and I are talking about maps, and in my haste to collect one to show him I had forgotten my rooms are no longer only my own. I did not intend to intrude.”

“Oh, do not worry about that!” Maedhros exclaimed at once, looking a little embarrassed himself by how he had startled at the opening door. “Please, Rumil, come in. It is still your room, really; you must not hesitate to come in whenever you like.”

“I did not wish to interrupt you at your—ah, that is to say, at whatever it is you are—“

“Only a little mending,” Maedhros said, showing the worn trouser leg in his hands as proof. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor beneath the single window, so that the narrow tongue of light fell warm across his knees; his back had been to the door, which explained how he had jumped at the sound of it opening. There was a silver needle between his fingers, flickering brightly as it caught the sunlight in his hand.

“Amrod has grown so quickly that he took the initiative to steal a pair of Maglor’s trousers, and he has already put holes in them. He’s a right scamp. He only confessed to me because he was frightened at what Maglor would do when he found out, and I was frightened you were Maglor coming in just now, before I managed to patch them up. Don’t worry about it.”

His voice was fond. Rumil smiled, relieved and amused together. 

“I shall not tell Maglor,” he promised, as he closed the door behind him. “In truth, I am glad your brother is still able to run about and get into small scrapes, even in such a grim place as this. I know the road that brought you here was hard, and he must have had to grow up too quickly. I wish we could have offered you safety at the end of your journey; not war.”

Maedhros shrugged quickly.

“You _have_ offered us safety; we are grateful for it. And if it is safety that we need to fight to keep, well.” His smile was a little crooked, but still a smile, as he shifted to the side a little to allow Rumil better access to his shelves in the corner of the room. “We have been well prepared for _that_ , I assure you.”

“I have seen that,” Rumil assured him, crossing the room and rummaging until he found the volume he sought. He opened the sketchbook by habit, turning carefully through the pages. The leather cover had been expensive, and the Italian-milled paper within exorbitantly so; a gift, long ago, from a friend. Feanor would chide him further, he supposed, when he saw how little Rumil had actually drawn in it over the years, but those fine sheets had always felt too precious to mar with uncertain pencil and ink.

Still, after a moment’s search he found what he was looking for: the map of the mountains he had begun when he first settled in Mithrim, nigh upon a decade ago now. It was in truth scarcely started at all, in pencil and charcoal sketching, most of the page an ominous blank. What tentative lines there were were more guesswork than accurate cartography. 

_Feanor is right,_ Rumil tried to convince himself as he stared down at the sheet: with the recent strengthening of Mithrim’s garrison it was time that they sent out scouts to better learn the lay of their enemy’s land. They could not remain forever afraid of learning that which they had to know. _He_ could not remain afraid.

“Is that map one which you drew, sir?”  


“The beginning of one,” Rumil answered, surprised out of his reverie to see Maedhros watching him with clear curiosity. Feeling slightly foolish, he tilted the book in his hands to show Feanor’s son the poor scratchings, and Maedhros leaned forward a little to examine them.

“These are the mountains north?”

“Yes—or they were, a decade ago. Before we were quite so afraid to leave these walls in exploration. This one,” he said, tracing the shadowed slope with his fingertip, “we call the Diablo, for that is what the Spaniard to the south calls it. There are a lot of stories about that place, among the people who lived here before us. Many of the natives who have joined our cause believe it is the center of creation. The Spanish think it haunted.”

“Curious. And you think that Mairon and his men have set up a camp somewhere in the foothills?”

“In the hills, or in the forest surrounding; perhaps. We do not know enough about the land to know where they may be hiding, yet. It has been enough, these last years, to focus our energies on driving them back to wherever they skulk, without growing any ambition of smoking them out.”

“I can put an expedition together,” Maedhros offered immediately, straightening. “Celegorm will come with me, if I ask, and I know a few fellows of Athair’s who I can depend upon. If you have good men of your own to recommend to me it would be a welcome chance to unify our forces a little, as well. We could strike out at dawn tomorrow.”

Rumil looked at that brave young face upturned, half-lit in the sunlight, and hesitated. He closed the book.

“What about poor Amrod?”

“Oh,” Maedhros glanced down at the mending in his hands, dismissive. “If I am lucky enough to be left uninterrupted I shall be finished with these in a quarter-hour. There is plenty enough daylight left for planning. And if Athair thinks this is important—“

“He does.” Rumil frowned, regarding the half-darned trousers. In his interest in the map, Maedhros had let the needle fall; it hung suspended by its thread, forgotten. 

Feanor did indeed think it important, to send out a surveying party. Rumil had spent the better part of the last hour quarreling with his friend over the matter, after the Irishman had refused to be gainsaid any longer, and insisted the question be settled. Feanor was not a kind man to disagree with, and in a rising, scathing temper had called Rumil timid, and small-minded, before Rumil left in a bitter mood of his own to retrieve his maps. Rumil did not think Maedhros would do the same, and yet it was still unpleasant, to hear the father’s sharp argument made again in the warm-lilting voice of the son.

_If Athair thinks this is important,_ Maedhros would have said, if Rumil had not cut him short, _then of course we must do as he wishes._

“That’s some good needlework,” Rumil remarked, attempting to chase away his unease by leaning down a little to peer at the tidy stitches. Maedhros, smoothing the fabric with renewed attention, chased up the needle again. “Your mother taught you?”

“Yes. Or—no. In truth it was my grandmother who showed me, in the first days I went to live with my grandfather in the city.”

“Indeed! Small wonder your stitches are so fine, then; Feanor has told me how his mother was skilled with a needle.”

“Oh.” Maedhros flushed a little, and offered a hesitant, almost apologetic smile. “It was not—I mean, it was my grandfather’s second wife, who taught me. Not—not Miriel my grandmother. She died before I was born.”

“Oh!” It was Rumil’s turn to feel the mortification suffuse his face, as he realized his blunder. Confound Feanor and his complicated family! He began to stammer out an apology, then subsided, not certain what he was apologizing for. Maedhros did not seem offended, but he bent his face to his work again with his ears still a little red, as though the error had been not Rumil’s, but his own. 

From this angle, Rumil could see the side of the boy’s neck exposed, where he usually wore a kerchief or high collar buttoned close. The little room was stuffy, and Maedhros had unbuttoned his collar when he was alone. In the exposed skin there beneath his jaw, Rumil saw for the first time a peculiar, sunken scar. 

Rumil had his own scars upon his own throat— _a ring like Christ’s crown of thorns, his Master had laughed_ , long ago. He had been about this boy’s age, when he tried for the first time to escape from Bauglir’s greedy hands; when he had returned begging and vomiting blood, Mairon’s cruel trick collar having done its work. The second time he fled, he had been twice as afraid, but he had a friend to help him.

Feanor had told him, then, that he did not owe any debts. Rumil then—Young and holding the broken collar painlessly between trembling hands—and Rumil now—Old and long-familiar with the look of the scars punctuating the dark skin of his throat—never quite believed that.

Feanor had told him Maedhros was attacked, upon the road, but gave no details beyond asking if Rumil knew of Bauglir employing any women. A strange question—and a strange wound, cut in teethmarks upon the boy’s throat. The scarring did not look old. It had not occurred to Rumil, before, that Maedhros was hiding it, despite the omnipresent neckerchief. 

It had not occurred to him that there could be any kinship between this radiant boy and the boy that he had been so many years ago. 

He might ask Feanor about it, but—no. That would be overstepping his bounds. Rumil had no children; his was not a father’s place. Whatever lessons of shame he had been forced to learn decades previously, he did not have the right to project them upon his friend and ally’s son. 

(No more than he had the right to see that friend’s will like puppetry in the generosity of that son.)

He cleared his throat. 

“Jem,” he said, abruptly. Maedhros looked up again, still a little wary. 

“You can take Jem with you. She was one of my surveyors, before, and she knows the land about better than most. I will speak to your father.”

“Very good,” said Maedhros, his expression clearing. He turned the needle lightly between finger and thumb, again and again. “Once I have finished here I shall seek you out, then, to go over preparations.”

“Come find us in my study,” Rumil agreed, crossing back to the door, and exiting out into the quiet hall. 

When Maedhros did join Feanor and Rumil in their war room, with his golden-haired brother at his shoulder, the kerchief was tied at his collar again, the needle put away. He did not look—he never looked—like a man who had ever been afraid. 

_(Do not be ashamed, is what Rumil did not tell him. We are not what is done to us—or what we are told to do.)_

Feanor had agreed readily—perhaps over-readily—that Maedhros and Jem should be given co-leadership of the expedition, and the planning after that went similarly quickly. His friend was pleased; he clapped Rumil upon the back and flashed Maedhros a smile, and it was as though he had never known anger at all. The weapons were almost ready, he said effusively; he and Curufin had made almost enough for a full raiding party, and new explosives besides. He was glad, he chuckled, that Rumil had finally found his stomach for war, after so long fasting on the paltry scraps of the besieged.

Maedhros did not laugh, at that, but he had brightened like that sun-caught needle when his father smiled his way.

Jem, when she returned to make her private report a few days later, said begrudgingly that she rather liked that Maedhros, that tall coppertop boy. 

Rumil was not surprised.


End file.
